Vince Friel and Lindsay Harris Friel have a lot of projects.

Today I took a huge risk, which un-nerved me to my very core, the name for which not even Autocorrect recognizes. I tried steeking.

Steeking, for those of you who aren’t knitting geeks, is the process by which knit material is cut and sewn to make it into something else or smaller or whatever. In my case, I had pretty much given up on the project, and figured I had nothing to lose by trying out the process.

I tried knitting a hat, using Plymouth Yarns’ Gina in 0001. I wanted a loose, slouchy hat which would cover my ears, without mushing my hair irretrievably flat against my head. So, I looked at Bohoknits’ Sockhead Hat (which is a terrific pattern) and modified it to accept the different gauge of this thicker yarn.

I also wanted a diagonal rib for the 4″ band at the hat’s brim, because I think it’s more interesting to knit. Unfortunately, despite measuring my melon and taking careful notes, I ended up with a giant family-sized salad bowl of a hat.

My head is smaller than a 2-liter soda bottle. I promise.

In this case, a normal person who wanted a hand-made custom-fit hat should do one of two things:

Unfortunately, when it comes to clothing myself in cold weather, I am more stubborn than rational. So, I know that if you run wool through the washer on a warm cycle, it will shrink. This process is sometimes called felting, and sometimes called tragedy. I decided that this hat was so big it could afford to participate in an experiment in shrinkage. So, not only did I run it through a clothes washer on a hot cycle, I ran it through a hot dryer.

For what it’s worth, let me show you how pretty the stitches looked before felting.

Thank you.

I also have to say that this yarn is as soft as a baby lamb’s earlobe. I knew felting would take away that feel. But baby, it’s cold outside.

So, a risky hot water wash and hot air dry later, I ended up with a hat that felt more tightly knit, but, guess what, was EXACTLY THE SAME DAMN SIZE. This is truly a testament to the resiliency and durability of Plymouth Yarn. I’m sure they make a yarn specifically for felting projects. If you want a yarn that won’t get ruined in the wash by mistake, I recommend this. And yes, it’s 100% wool.

Meanwhile, I still had a fuzzy floppy fruit bowl. I thought, I give up. I can’t frog it now, because it’s about 50% felted. I tried wearing it, and it flopped and any breeze threatened to blow it off my noggin. Finally, I folded up part of it and pinned it with a safety pin to make it fit more snugly.

Then I remembered steeking. I’d read about it in some knitting books, but never actually done it, nor seen it done. I looked up some YouTube tutorials on the process, and saw that it required more skill and foresight than I had for this project. Today, I said, screw it, I have nothing to lose at this point.

I measured out how much had to go, turned it inside out, and sewed a row of stitches across the hat, making a dart.

Then I took a pair of scissors and a deep breath, and cut the extra part off.

And here’s what I got:

Yes, that is a giant Darth Vader Pez Dispenser on our tchotchke shelf.

I like it. It fits, it’s comfortable, it looks cute. I am running it through another hot wash to see if I can get the new stitches to felt and mush with the rest of the yarn, so that seam will be more durable.

So, yeah; it’s been a while since I’ve last posted here. I’ve been applying for jobs and submitting scripts to opportunities. My track record has averaged one submission a day since last May. So far I’ve had a few good things come back (for example, The Wreck Of The Alberta had a reading with Athena Theatre Company, and it went Really Well, they’re good people). But it must be reading season, because I haven’t heard much lately.

Tickets are now available for a showcase of Latino-American love for the man whose voice helped redefine masculinity, Morrissey. The short plays are all culled from a nationwide call for submissions. I took a gamble with my friend, DJ and cultural connector, Rhienna Renee Guedry. We wrote a play about bicycles, not having sex, and woman-loving-women who love Morrissey, and sent it in, crossing our fingers and clapping our hands because we believe in fairies.

A few weeks later, we were fortunate enough to have our play, Pretty Petty Things, chosen as a finalist.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to get to Los Angeles from Philadelphia right now. BUT, if you can, you should! The cast is not only talented and skilled, but also gorgeous. The show promises to be a tour de force, complete with live musical performances and a lot of sweet and tender hooliganism. It’s only playing for one night, Thursday, November 13, at eight pm.

How often do you get to see a theatrical event that combines Latino contemporary life and California culture with the Anglophilic pop sensibility of the former frontman of The Smiths? Come to Casa 101 Theatre, 2102 East First Street, Los Angeles, California, 90033, for a singular dramatic event.

Bill Hader hosted Saturday Night live this past week, and, surprisingly, ranked historically low ratings. Despite Hader’s status as an SNL favorite and his new movie, The Skeleton Twins (with fellow SNL favorite Kristen Wiig) out in theaters, even I didn’t watch it. I like Bill Hader, particularly for his bizarre portrayal of Julian Assange.

The one character that seems to resonate most with the zeitgeist is his adorably esoteric nightlife pundit, Stefon. His mannerisms- the face-covered giggle, the sleeve plucking- remind me of my nephew, and his love of surreal entertainment usually cracks me up.

Honestly, I think I’ve been to some of those parties, particularly when Vince was playing with The Absinthe Drinkers. Preponderance of guests with mechanical arms? Check. Improvised jazz theramin? Check. Woman using a live python as a hair ornament? Check. Three witches making out under a giant paper-mache tree? Check.

Two things bother me, though. Hader’s inability to keep from laughing on camera rubs me the wrong way. I don’t find it as endearing as the character. It’s wonderful to be reminded that this is live, and chaos can happen, but it just seems like whoever’s operating the teleprompter is playing a joke on the audience.

The other bothersome thing is when Stefon’s love of the freak-show element becomes the disturbing recurring gag about human machines, which inevitably turn into some kind of riff on dwarf-tossing. If it were a woman being shaken until she says “ask again later,” it’d be rapey; if it were a person of color, it’d be censored. True, Stefon’s descriptions are lavished with variance in ethnicity, gender and age, but a person being used as a machine seems less consensual and more cruel.

Peter Dinklage has appeared on SNL’s Weekend Update, as a Drunk Uncle, and he was no stranger to cruel humor. It’s surprising that SNL’s writers would continue to make the human machine joke, if the popular, award-winning and really fucking smart Dinklage is a friend of the show. What I’d really, really, really love to see, is for Stefon to get started on one of his explanations of human traffic cones/fire hydrants/boom boxes/suitcases/kites/piñatas/Magic 8 balls/whatever, and have Dinklage slowly, deliberately, roll up right next to him, just out of his line of sight.

I mean, come on, writers. If you’re going to do rough comedy, do it in an interesting way.

SEO (Search Engine Optimized) Writing seems to be the main topic of interest that anyone ever comments about here on this little blog of mine. It’s fascinating. With all of the writing that I and sometimes my husband do about pop culture, music, theatre and the occasional recipe for canine cuisine, the one weird trick that always comes through in the Comments section is something like this:

Good morning writer and hello to you your website should have more traffic driving it I can make with SEO content your website traffic increase by one thousand and ninety seven percent, SEO is the wave of the future just like jetpacks and flying cars SEO Writing is a rare and highly specialized skill to use SEO keywords optimized to bring the highest Google results and increase your market potential my SEO experience and background in writing fluentest English extensively can bring SEO to your website now and make lots of more big dollars for you and myself huge potential contact me now sir more info about SEO Writing.

To which I say, wow, thank you for the word salad, and hit delete.

I’ve done a fair amount of SEO writing, and I’m not a bad SEO writer. A client contacts me, because they want some content on a particular topic for their website, and they want someone to do the research and write about it in an accessible way. They tell me how many words they want, usually around 300-500 per article, and what topic. I research it, write about it, rewrite it again to make it more concise and reader-friendly, and send it. They pay me, and everyone’s happy. They get clear, concise, accessible, researched website content to explain more about their product or service, and I get paid to do something at which I’m good and that I enjoy.

The difference between SEO writing and other kinds of writing is the search engine optimization. In order for the article to rank highly in search engine results, it has to use the same keyword as many times as possible. So, if you write an article that used the phrase “SEO writing services” once in the entire 500-word article, its page won’t have as high of a rank as, say, one that includes the phrase “SEO writing services” seven or eight times in those 500 words.

Now, when I was a wee lass learning to write out on the Quaker farm, where we still used paper and pencils, we were taught that repeating the same word too many times is tiring to a reader. And of course, since it was a Quaker school, wasting paper and graphite was a terrible sin. We learned not to bore our audience by repeating the same word over and over again. Sadly, the Internet was a gleam in the eye of a developer, and “page rank” was never discussed in seventh-grade writing classrooms.

But now, in the writing marketplace, repetition is good. However, a good SEO writer has to find inventive ways to make sure that the finished product is a clear, informative, helpful article with genuine information. It can’t just be a string of keywords, like a pattern of colored beads.

Currently, on Elance.com, writing is the second most high in demand skill, second to Web design. You’d think that a good SEO writer would be working 9-5 every day and making $40 an hour. Unfortunately, the offers are very strange, relative to the expected product and service an SEO writer provides.

As I write this, mostly based on experience, my current word count is 618, and it’s taken me roughly 20 minutes. I’ve barely done any research on this topic, other than a few quick glances at Elance. If I were to write an article with citable examples and footnotes, it would have taken longer. Furthermore, a shorter article takes more time, because of the thought process involved in condensing a topic. There is a reason that the haiku is an art form.

Most clients offer, for a 500 word researched article, using SEO writing, less than five dollars. I have been offered as little as six-tenths of a cent per word.

I have been fortunate, in that clients I’ve worked with have paid more, and they’ve been happy with my work. Unfortunately, these clients are few and far between. It’s really sad that the ability to write well is so undervalued, and it sincerely makes me wonder what I’m doing with my life sometimes. But, I’m really good at this, I can’t stop doing it, and this is what I want to do for a living.

In other news: The search terms used to find this blog, relative to the actual content, are often interesting. I think of this as a place for us to write about our music and theater projects. The most popular search terms used to find this blog are as follows:

Pat Smear is, of course, a guitarist in the ubiquitous Foo Fighters, and was occasionally an additional live guitarist for Nirvana. Both bands are and have been among the most popular music in America, and I’m sure that if you turn on any rock or college radio station in America and wait a few minutes, you’ll certainly hear “Learning To Fly.” I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, it’s just that it’s everywhere. So since you phrased your question in terms of need, I’m not sure that they answer is yes.

Could you benefit from Pat Smear? Sure. But do you need to seek his work out, like a signed first edition of To Kill A Mockingbird?

If you’re going to do that, I recommend starting with work more indicative of his particular style than the latest Foo Fighters album, or Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged In New York album. I think it’s time that you catch some Germs.

Okay, you’re sixteen, which means that the Los Angeles punk scene’s heyday was long before you were born. The Germs, however, are widely considered to music historians as one of the most influential bands in punk. Pat Smear played guitar, Lorna Doom played bass, Don Bolles was the drummer and their lead singer was Darby Crash. Joan Jett produced their one studio album, (GI), in 1979. Despite critical acclaim for this album continuing to the present day, the band broke up following Crash’s suicide in 1980. You may want to get your friends together to watch Penelope Spheeris’ documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, as well as the biographical film What We Do Is Secret.

As you’re watching this, take a look at how these individuals were able to rebel against corporate capitalism without using the Internet (to say nothing of cell phones or Pitchfork), as well as how women presented themselves as agents of their own fortune and/or victims of male rebels. Ask yourself, what is victimization, and what is power, and how do these individuals make use of these systems of domination and control? Do they win or lose? How and why? Then pick up a copy of (GI), and congratulate yourself on confusing the hell out of your parents by embracing an important part of American history.

At age sixteen, do you need Pat Smear? Yes, but you also need Joan Baez. You need music that will fan the flames of your adolescent curiosity and ambition and fuel you to make the most out of your life. Go for it.

I realize that it is entirely possible that what you meant to write is “I am sixteen do I need a pap smear,” in which case, that is a personal decision you should make with a doctor or nurse practitioner.

However, if you are really concerned about cervical cancer, here are some resources which may be helpful.

Earlier this summer, I was browsing through different lists of playwriting opportunities, and I found one that reached out to me like a beacon in the dark.

TEATRO MOZ, sponsored by Real Women Have Curves Studio, is sponsoring a short play contest. Do you have a dramatic memoir about the first time you fell in love with this Charming Man? Do the lyrics or title of a Smiths/Morrissey song inspire a story in your soul? Submit a short MOZ-themed play for a chance to win prizes and a staged reading of your piece by professional actors later this year!

I thought, that sounds so crazy it has to be fun. I know next to nothing about Morrissey, but I bought “You Are The Quarry” when it first came out, and loved “Irish Blood, English Heart.” I listen to The Smiths’ older hits quite a bit, and the sense of desire and longing, maybe desire for desire itself more than fulfillment, speaks to my inner gay man. Usually themed play contests and showcases are about heavy topics, but I’ve never seen anything like this before. I thought, I love this.

So, I sent a quick e-mail to my friend Rhienna. She is a DJ and creative connector (as DJs tend to be) in Portland, and every year she runs the annual Morrissey Mobile Disco bike ride as part of Pedalpalooza. Basically, a lot of people get together and ride a pre-planned course, with decorated bicycles, Morrissey look-alike outfits, and, of course, music, music, music. I thought if anyone knows anything unique and fun about the phenomenon that is Morrissey, she does.

We had a cross-country confab. Oddly enough the deadline for the play contest was immediately following the next annual ride, so she had plenty of fresh material. We talked about Morrissey, his cancelled tour dates, loving him from afar, how his appeal transcends boundaries of sexuality and gender, and how the ride is a really fun time. and how riding bikes with a group on a gorgeous summer evening is a fun young and in love or in love with love thing to do. Their course’s goal was the Joan of Arc statue in Coe Circle, and since it’s beautiful and Philadelphia also has a Joan of Arc statue, I had to work that in.

She gave me a lot of information, helped me sort through ideas, and I typed it up and sent it.

Today, we got an e-mail from Teatro MOZ that Pretty Petty Things was picked as one of ten finalists! Which means it’ll be in the showcase!

Not only am I excited about this, I’m excited about what this means. Basically:

Someone in LA loves the phenomenon that is Morrissey and his music to say, “let’s put up a short play festival about this thing I love.”

And a professional theatre said, “Sure. This is new, this is different, yes, we’ll back it.”

And they sent a call for entries out.

Meanwhile, in other cities in other parts of the country, two women said, “You know what, that sounds like fun and it’s something I know a little bit about, I’ll work on something and send it in and if they like it, they like it.”

Basically, once again, as Lorna Howley said, what is theatre but a big party?

I love the idea of people getting positive ideas and putting them together to make something bigger and better. which, in my opinion, is what theatre is all about.

and I can’t wait to find out why the celebrity judges are. I’m secretly hoping for Thomas Lennon.